17: Revolutionary Movements until 1848

The independence wars of the Balkan nations started in Serbia where the fierce struggle
against Ottoman rule was going on throughout almost the whole Napoleonic period and where
the situation was so critical at the time of the Congress of Vienna that a Serb delegation
appeared there asking for help but without receiving any attention.

It was only natural that the Serbs were the first to rise.
Those of them who were living in the mountains of Montenegro had, as a matter of fact,
never been completely conquered, and their independence under the prince-bishops of the
Petrovich-Njegoch family, residing at Cetinje, was formally recognized by Turkey in 1799.
This was of course an encouragement to Serbia proper, which after the liberation of
Hungary found herself at the extreme northern border of the Ottoman Empire and had her
main center at Belgrade, the strategically important city which the Turks had twice
temporarily lost to the Habsburgs in the eighteenth century. At the end of that century
Belgrade became an important center of Serb nationalism under a strong cultural influence
coming from southern Hungary where the Orthodox Serb minority had its metropolitan at
Karlowitz and where the first prominent Serb writer, Dositej Obradovich, educated in
Austria, Germany, and England, started his activity.

It is highly significant that Obradovich was later made
minister of education in the free Serb government created by the revolutionary leader,
George Petrovich, who became known under the name of Kara (Black) George and founded the
Karageorgevich dynasty. Kara George took advantage of the resistance which in the frontier
regions of the declining Ottoman Empire had been provoked, first, by the abuses of the
Turkish janissaries, but which also soon turned against the sultan himself. The organized
revolt began in 1804 in the region between the Morava and Drina rivers and seemed to have
serious chances of success when another Russo-Turkish war broke out two years later. The
courageous struggle of the warlike Serb peasants proved indeed a useful diversion for the
Russian forces which advanced, however, through the Danubian principalities into Bulgaria,
never made contact with the Serbs, and practically abandoned them to their fate when the
Peace of Bucharest was concluded in 1812. Kara George himself had to take refuge in
Hungary.

In spite of a violent Turkish repression which followed, and
because of the lack of any outside assistance, the fight for freedom was resumed in the
very year of the Congress of Vienna under a new national leader, Milosh Obrenovich. That
former collaborator of Kara George now became his competitor in the liberation movement,
and his descendants, the Obrenovich, were to be for almost one hundred years the rivals of
the Karageorgevich, not without harmful consequences for the common cause. Milosh fully
realized that under the given circumstances the ultimate goal of full independence could
not be reached at once, and supplementing his inadequate military forces by a skillful
diplomacy, he tried to gain gradual concessions from Turkey. A first step in the direction
of at least local autonomy was made in 1817 when Obrenovich received from the sultan the
title Prince of Serbia, but of a Serbia limited to the district of Belgrade and therefore
much smaller than the ethnic territory of the Serb people. To enlarge that nucleus of a
restored Serb state and also to increase the very limited power granted to its ruler was
to be the program of Serbia’s policy for the next century.

Unfortunately, in the same year of 1817 Milosh’s
complicity in the assassination of his rival, Kara George, wrongly accused of having
abandoned the national cause, made final the break between the two families at a time when
unity was so badly needed. Nevertheless, full advantage was taken of the Russo-Turkish War
of 1828—1829, although the main military action again took place in the eastern
Balkans, far away from Serbia. This time the peace treaty included a promise of autonomy
for Serbia, and the next year (1830) Milosh was recognized by the sultan as hereditary
ruler, with a slight enlargement of Serbia’s territory, from which the Turkish troops
were almost completely withdrawn. This success was followed in 1831 by the establishment
of a Serb metropolitan at Belgrade, an important implementation of political autonomy by
ecclesiastical autonomy and part of the prince’s serious efforts to promote the
cultural development of the restored country. With regard to the Serbs who remained under
Habsburg rule in Hungary, the situation was now reversed. Those of Serbia proper, no
longer under Turkish oppression, now had, in spite of the sultan’s rather theoretical
suzerainty, more freedom and opportunity for national development than their kin on the
other side of the Danube. At the same time Serbia was freed from Greek control in the
ecclesiastical field, a control which during the whole period of Ottoman domination all
Christian populations of the empire had to suffer in addition to political oppression by
the Turks.

For that very reason the problem of Greek nationalism is
somewhat different from the story of the other Christian peoples of the Balkan Peninsula.
On the one hand, no other nation had an older and prouder tradition than the Greeks, and
in general, during all the centuries of Turkish rule, their position was more favorable
than that of Serbs or Bulgars. But on the other hand, a clear distinction must be made
between two Greek traditions. In Constantinople the Greek Empire was indeed replaced by
the Ottoman, but the patriarchate continued to play an extremely important role, sometimes
humiliated and used as a political tool by the Sultans but always recognized as spiritual
leader of all the Orthodox without distinction of nationality. In that connection, as well
as in trade relations, the Greek language was always widely used in the whole empire, in
whose diplomatic service many Greeks achieved distinction. There also survived, however,
the purely Hellenic tradition which already toward the end of the Byzantine Empire had
assumed a clearly national character and now when the Ottoman Empire was in turn declining
developed along with the other modern national movements. Inspired by the monuments of
ancient Greece, that new-Hellenic movement had no imperial ambitions, but, similar to the
others, wanted to liberate the national territory, practically identified with old Hellas,
from the degrading Turkish yoke and create an independent state there.

In view of its specific character as a revival of ancient
Greece, that movement had a strong appeal in Western Europe, were it only among
enthusiastic romanticists like Lord Byron, who was to give his life for the Greek cause.
But also from a political point of view there was a special interest in the aspirations of
the Greeks, a Mediterranean nation whose territory, including the islands of the Aegean
Sea, had great strategic significance for all other Mediterranean powers and particularly
for Great Britain. The Greeks, much better known to the Western world than the other
peoples of the Balkans, had for all these reasons a much better chance to find outside
support for both their cultural and their political program, represented by the
Philohellenic Society (Philiké Hetairea), which was definitely established in the
very year of the Congress of Vienna with branches outside the Ottoman Empire. For the same
reasons, however, the Greek patriarchate in Constantinople was less enthusiastic toward a
revolutionary movement influenced by French ideas, which seemed a threat to the position
of the Orthodox church in the whole empire and would reduce the Greek problem to one of
the national issues amidst the empire’s disintegration.

This peculiar situation, and also the connection between the
Greek and the other national movements, may explain why the open fight for Greek freedom
started in 1821 in distant Moldavia. There Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a member of a noted
Phanariote family which had temporarily occupied the throne of that country, raised a
rebellion against Turkish suzerainty, as leader of the Greek Hetairea. In Moldavia
the movement was rapidly crushed and merely resulted in the replacement of the Phanariote
princes by native rulers in both Rumanian principalities. But almost simultaneously a
genuine Greek insurrection started in the Morea, the very center of Greek nationalism, and
soon spread over northern Greece and the islands. Alarmed by that outbreak, the sultan
made the great mistake of having the Patriarch of Constantinople publicly hanged, although
he was not at all responsible, and his ordeal shocked not only all Greeks and Orthodox but
also general public opinion even in America.

It was most important, however, that the Greek independence
war, coming only six years after the Congress of Vienna, divided the leading powers of the
European concert. They all had to realize that there was a region of Europe where the
general peace, established in 1815, was extremely precarious. But though Metternich
considered the Greek movement just one of the wanton rebellions against the European order
which had to be crushed, like the abortive revolutions in Western countries, Alexander I
at once seized the opportunity to interfere in favor of the Orthodox populations of
Turkey, according to the right granted to Russia in her treaties with the Ottoman Empire.
The sultan rejected the czar’s request that Turkish troops be withdrawn from the
Danubian principalities and that an amnesty be granted to the Greeks, but the progress
made by the latter, who convoked a national assembly at Epidaurus in 1822, definitely made
their cause an international issue.

At the same time, however, it became part of an intricate game
of power politics, as the whole nationalities problem in the Balkans was to remain for the
rest of the century. In the case of the Greeks, this interference of the great powers, not
only of Russia but also of Britain and even of France, whose squadrons participated in the
naval battle of Navarino where in 1827 the Turkish-Egyptian fleet was annihilated, greatly
accelerated the achievement of the ultimate goal of the national movement—full
independence. Instead of merely an autonomous status, recommended by the Western powers
and rejected by Turkey in the earlier phase of the conflict, the independence of Greece
had to be recognized by the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Adrianople, after its defeats
in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828—1829. The next year, in 1830, an international
protocol declared Greece an independent monarchy and there was again at least one
completely free country in the intermediary zone between the empires of Central and
Eastern Europe. From that moment the modern history of Greece, identified in the Middle
Ages with that of one of the empires, with Byzantium, became an inseparable part of the
history of the smaller nations of East Central Europe.

The Treaty of Adrianople once more confirmed the autonomous
position of the Danubian principalities, which remained for five years under Russian
occupation, and for the first time internationally recognized the autonomy of Serbia, so
patiently prepared by Milosh Obrenovich. That country had to wait for half a century
before reaching full independence, and at this early stage the boundaries of neither
Greece nor Serbia included the whole area inhabited by the Greek and Serb peoples. But in
both national states serious efforts in the field of internal organization at once set in.

In both cases these efforts had to meet with serious
difficulties, particularly with regard to the constitutional problems, and this again
is typical of the history of all liberated Balkan nations. But these difficulties
are fully understandable in view of the long interruption of any normal historical
development in the Balkans, of similar constitutional crises in the Western countries, and
of continuous interference by the great powers, rivaling for influence in the reorganized
Balkan region.

In Greece after three years of confusion before the final
establishment of the monarchy, which was opposed by strong republican forces, the rule of
her first king, Otto of Bavaria, was to last from 1832 until 1862 when he was forced to
abdicate and a new dynasty, this time of Danish origin, took his place after another year
of crisis. But already in 1843 a military revolt forced the king to dismiss his Bavarian
advisers and to accept a constitution, with a responsible cabinet and a two-chamber
parliament composed of a senate nominated by the king and a house of deputies elected by
universal suffrage.

In Serbia, in spite of Milosh’s autocratic tendencies, a
parliament called Skupshtina was created and a first constitution drafted in 1835.
Three years later a decree of the sultan instituted a council of state and a cabinet of
ministers. After Milosh’s abdication in 1839, the death of his eldest son and the
exile of the second in 1842, the Skupshtina elected the son of Kara George,
Alexander, under whom, in spite of his rather poor qualifications, a great deal of
progress was achieved in the fields of both culture and administration. Language and
literature developed in the direction of unity with the Croats, but the center of the
Yugoslav movement was in Montenegro where from 1830 to 1851 the throne was occupied by a
distinguished leader of that movement, Petar Petrovich Njegosh, the last prince who was at
the same time the Orthodox bishop.

Thus nationalism was successfully growing in the Balkans, while
the whole northern part of East Central Europe continued to be subject to the Austrian and
Russian empires and to Prussia. And the situation in that whole region was particularly
unfavorable to any national movement, since the strongest of them, the Polish, had
suffered a crushing defeat at the very moment when Greece and Serbia were liberated in the
Balkans and when the successful Belgian revolution forced the powers to revise the
settlement of the Congress of Vienna in Western Europe.

THE ORIGIN AND BACKGROUND OF THE NOVEMBER INSURRECTION IN POLAND

The Polish insurrection which broke out in Warsaw on November 29, 1830, is sometimes
called a Polish-Russian war. It was indeed a conflict between the kingdom of Poland, which
was supposed to exist again after the Congress of Vienna, and the Russian Empire, to which
that separated body politic was attached by a personal union only. But long before the
Polish army rebelled against the czar’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, who had been
made its commander in chief, and before the Polish Diet on January 25, 1831, formally
dethroned the Romanov dynasty, the whole conception of 1815 proved a fiction which could
not possibly endure.

During the fifteen years between the Congress and the
Revolution, no little progress had been made in the kingdom, particularly in the cultural
and economic fields. A Polish university was opened in Warsaw in 1817, and the most
prominent member of the Polish government, Prince Xavier Lubecki, achieved a great deal as
minister of finance. But already under Czar Alexander, solemnly crowned in Warsaw as king
of Poland, even those Poles who had accepted the Vienna decisions as a basis for
constructive activities were deeply disappointed. Alexander’s vague promises that the
eastern provinces of the former commonwealth would be reunited with the kingdom proved
impossible of fulfilment, even if they were sincere. Although under Russian rule Polish
culture continued to flourish there, particularly in the former grand duchy of Lithuania
where the University of Wilno was a more brilliant center of Polish learning and
literature than ever before, the Russians considered those “West-Russian” lands
an integral part of the empire which the czar had no right to alienate. Already in 1823
Prince Adam Czartoryski was removed from his position as “curator” of the
University of Wilno, where severe repressions against the Polish youth organizations
started at once. The Russian senator N. N. Novosiltsov, chiefly responsible for these
measures, was at the same time interfering with the administration of the kingdom where
instead of Czartoryski the insignificant General Zajaczek was appointed viceroy.
Novosiltsov’s role was of course contrary to the apparently liberal constitution
which Czartoryski had helped to draft. The leading patriots in the Diet tried in vain to
defend Poland’s constitutional rights on legal grounds, while those who realized the
futility of such loyal opposition engaged in conspiracies which even the most severe
police control proved unable to check.

The tension rapidly increased when Alexander I died in 1825.
After the abortive December revolution in St. Petersburg, whose leaders seemed to favor
the Polish claims, he was succeeded by his brother Nicholas I. He too was crowned as king
of Poland a few years later. But without even the appearance of liberalism which had been
shown by Alexander, he considered the parliamentary regime of the kingdom as being
completely incompatible with the autocratic form of government which he so fully developed
in Russia. Hence the Polish radicals, under the leadership of young infantry cadets, rose
in defense of their constitution. Public opinion was alarmed by the news that the Polish
army would be used by the czar as a vanguard for crushing the revolutionary movements
which in 1830 had broken out in France and Belgium and which received Polish sympathy.

Even the moderate leaders who were surprised by the plot of the
cadets and who considered the insurrection as having been insufficiently prepared, joined
it in a spirit of national unity, though much time was lost through the hesitation of
those who still hoped to appease the czar and to arrive at some compromise. Among these
was General Chlopicki, who was entrusted with practically dictatorial powers. Even later,
the changing leadership of the Polish army, which for nine months opposed the overwhelming
Russian forces, proved rather undecided and inadequate so that even initial successes and
bold strategic conceptions of the general staff were not sufficiently utilized. Therefore
the struggle ended in a victory of the Russian Field Marshal Paskevich, a veteran of the
war against Turkey, and on September 7, 1831, after a siege of three weeks, Warsaw was
taken by storm.

Two aspects of that greatest Polish insurrection of the
nineteenth century are of general interest, one with regard to the problem of
nationalities in East Central Europe, the other from the point of view of international
relations in Europe as a whole. The uprising which had started in Warsaw as an action of
the so-called “Congress Kingdom,” had immediate repercussions east of the Bug
River, in the Lithuanian and Ruthenian provinces of the historic commonwealth.
Particularly in the former grand duchy of Lithuania there was a strong participation in
the revolutionary movement against Russian rule, not only among the Polonized nobility but
also among the gentry and the peasants of purely Lithuanian stock. And though there were
social controversies in connection with the promised abolition of serfdom, there was no
Lithuanian separatism on ethnic grounds but a common desire to restore the traditional
Polish-Lithuanian Union in full independence from Russia. Regular Polish forces came from
the territory of the kingdom, and the movement spread as far as the Livonian border but
was unable to liberate the main cities and broke down with the doom of the insurrection in
Poland proper.

The leaders of the revolution also hoped to obtain the support
of the Ukrainian lands. Here, too, they appealed not only to the Polish and Polonized
nobles and to the idea of Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian cooperation in some tripartite
federation of the future, but also to the peasant masses which, however, remained
distrustful and passive. The young Taras Shevchenko, who was soon to become the first
great Ukrainian poet, had contacts with some of the Polish leaders. But he was not won
over, and later he made the significant statement that “Poland fell and crushed us
too.” For the czarist government, after the defeat of the Poles, started a ruthless
Russification not only in the Congress kingdom but also in all Lithuanian and Ruthenian
lands where not only the Poles and the supporters of the Polish cause, but all non-Russian
elements, were also the victims—a situation which greatly contributed to the rise of
Lithuanian and Ukrainian nationalism.

While these indirect consequences of the November insurrection
appeared only later, the diplomatic repercussions in general European politics were
simultaneous. All Poles realized that their fight for freedom could have notable chances
for success only if supported by other powers. Therefore, turning exclusively against
Russia, which controlled by far the largest part of Poland s historic territory in one
form or another, they hoped for the complacence of Austria and even for some sympathy
among the liberals in Germany. Decisive, however, seemed the attitude of the Western
powers, France and Britain. Well realized by Polish public opinion in general, the
necessity to find outside assistance was the main concern of Prince Adam Czartoryski,
Poland’s greatest statesman of the nineteenth century. After years of endeavor toward
a reconciliation with Russia he now recognized the hopelessness of such a policy and for
the remaining thirty years of his life was to be Russia s most persistent opponent.

Although Czartoryski never was popular among the leftists led
by the famous historian Joachim Lelewel, his authority was so great that he was placed at
the head of the national government. As such he made every effort to make the revolution
an international issue, and he sent diplomatic representatives abroad, particularly to
Paris and London. After the dethronement of Nicholas I as king of Poland, even the
election of another king was considered. In order to interest Vienna in the Polish cause,
the candidature of an Austrian archduke or of the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon’s son
who was kept at the Austrian court, was put forward, as well as that of the Prince of
Orange or of a member of the British royal family. More realistic was the conviction that
all signatories of the 1815 treaties ought to be interested in the violation of the
promises then made to the Poles, and that they would therefore intercede in their behalf.

But all the diplomatic skill of Czartoryski and his
collaborators proved to be of no avail. Even statesmen who seemed favorable to the Poles,
such as Talleyrand and Sebastiani in France or Palmerston in England, wanted them first to
gain substantial victories through their own forces. Prospects of a joint French-British
mediation, with the possible participation of Austria, vanished when the Belgian problem
created a tension between the two western powers, while Austria showed some interest in
Poland’s fate only at the last moment when the defeated Polish regiments had already
crossed over into Galicia, only to be disarmed there like those who crossed the Prussian
border.

As a matter of fact the Polish insurrection had saved France
and Belgium from Russian intervention, thus giving evidence that a really independent
Poland would be a protection against czarist imperialism, as in the past. Therefore
Czartoryski, who after participating as a volunteer in the last fights went into exile for
the rest of his life, hoped that the complete conquest of Congress Poland by Russia would
again raise those fears of Russian expansion which were so general in 1815 in Vienna. In
Paris he tried to convince old Talleyrand that at least a restoration of the autonomous
kingdom ought to be requested from the czar, but Sebastiani made the famous statement that
“order reigned in Warsaw,” and in London, where the prince made many friends for
Poland, he heard the objection that “unfortunately the Polish question was contrary
to the interests of all other powers.

To convince the world that this was not so was
Czartoryski’s main objective after his final establishment at the Hotel Lambert in
Paris from 1833 on. He tried to accomplish his ends by connecting the Polish cause with
that of all oppressed nations. Therefore that “uncrowned king of Poland,” with
his diplomatic agents in almost all European capitals, was working for the liberation of
the whole of East Central Europe. In the belief that the fate of Poland was part of a much
larger problem, the whole Polish emigration, concentrated in France and inspired by great
poets including Adam Mickiewicz, was united in spite of differences of method between the
right and the left. The latter, eager to join revolutionary movements anywhere, was also
eager to organize new conspiracies in the oppressed country at once, with another
insurrection as ultimate goal, without sufficiently realizing that there was not the
slightest chance of success under the regime established by the victorious czar in all his
Polish possessions.

In addition to the ruthless persecution of everything that was
Polish or connected with Poland in the eastern provinces where the University of Wilno and
the Uniate church were the main victims, a period of reaction also started in the
so-called kingdom under Paskevich as general governor. Considering that the Poles through
their rebellion had forfeited all rights granted them at the Congress of Vienna, in 1832
Nicholas I replaced the constitution of the kingdom by an “Organic Statute”
which liquidated its autonomy and made it practically a Russian province, subject to
systematic Russification particularly in the educational field. The fiction of a
restoration of Poland in union with Russia was now abandoned and the czarist empire
advanced to the very boundaries of Prussian and Austrian Poland.

Under these circumstances the other two partitioning powers
became convinced that close cooperation with Russia was indispensable. A secret agreement
was therefore concluded in 1833 by the three monarchs, who guaranteed one another their
Polish possessions and promised mutual assistance in case of a new revolution. Jointly,
they also militarily occupied (without however annexing it) the Free City of Cracow where
the November insurrection had found numerous partisans. The settlement made at the
Congress of Vienna was thus revised in East Central Europe in favor of the imperialistic
powers, and it became even more intolerable for the submerged nationalities. For the
reaction directed against the Poles, whom Metternich considered the typical
revolutionaries, was accompanied, both in the Habsburg Empire which he fully controlled
and in the Russia of his ally Nicholas I, by oppressive measures against all other peoples
who were dissatisfied with their fate.

THE NATIONALITIES POLICY OF NICHOLAS I AND METTERNICH

In both the Russian Empire of Nicholas I and the Austrian Empire of the Metternich era,
the government policy with regard to the non-Russian and non-German nationalities was only
part of a program of administration based upon absolutism and centralism. But a clear
distinction must be made between conditions in Russia and in Austria.

Under Nicholas I it was officially proclaimed that czarist
Russia had three traditional pillars, and one of them, in addition to autocracy and
Orthodox religion, was Russian nationalism. The process of Russification which had already
set in under the predecessors of Nicholas I, but which in his reign was developed
systematically, was therefore not only a tool of czarist imperialism which facilitated the
unification of the whole realm but also an attempt toward making the empire, one and
indivisible, the national state of the Great Russian people. In the Habsburg Empire, on
the contrary, there was no Austrian nationalism, and the nationalists among the
German-speaking subjects of the emperor were interested in their unity with all other
Germans outside Austria rather than in the impossible task of Germanizing the non-German
majority in the whole Danubian monarchy. The growing nationalism of these non-German
peoples was in conflict with the German Austrians only in those provinces which had a
mixed population. But everywhere that nationalism was in conflict with, and repressed by,
the imperialism of a central administration which could be but German in language and
culture.

In Russia the biggest nationality problem, and as a matter of
fact the only one which was openly recognized as such, was indeed the Polish question. And
among the Poles alone there was a nationalism which had complete political liberation in a
restored national state as its immediate objective. Hence the persecutions which followed
the November Insurrection and continued throughout the following twenty-five years of the
reign of Nicholas I. The most numerous among the non-Russian nationalities of the empire,
however, were the Ukrainians, officially called Little Russians and considered part of one
Russian nation, just as were the Great Russians, while their language was supposed to be
merely a dialect of Russian.

For that very reason it was important that at the very same
time when Russian literature was so brilliantly developing, Ukrainian literature,
following Kotlyarewsky’s earlier initiative, also continued to make slow but
significant progress in the first half of the nineteenth century. While Russia’s
first great poet, Alexander Pushkin, declared that all the Slavic rivers had to flow into
the Russian sea, the somewhat younger Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevehenko, glorified the
Ukraine as a separate country which was faithful to the Cozack tradition. The Ukrainian
movement, too, was influenced by the rising ideology of Pan-Slavism, but this was
interpreted in the spirit of romantic idealism, with equal chances of free development for
all Slavic nations and without any identification with some kind of imperial
Pan-Russianism. But what the Ukrainian leaders, still few in number, claimed in these
early days was not yet full independence but cultural freedom and autonomy in a Slavic
federation in which Russia might even play a leading role.

Such ideas, supported by scholarly and literary activities,
found a natural center in the University of Kiev where the former Polish University of
Wilno was transferred in 1832, of course as a Russian institution but with some
distinguished professors of Ukrainian origin or interested in the Ukrainian tradition
which was studied there by a special archaeological commission. In addition to Shevchenko,
who on his return from St. Petersburg was attached to that commission, the historians N.
Kostomarov and P. Kulish were particularly prominent. They belonged to the group that
founded the “Brotherhood” or Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius, probably in
1846. The name of that association indicates its ideas of Slavic solidarity on religious
grounds and its mainly cultural character. But it was of course also dedicated to the idea
of national freedom for the Ukrainians, inseparable from social and constitutional
liberties which men like Shevchenko, originally a serf himself, along with the liberal
elements among the Russians, claimed for all peoples of the empire.

It was, however, precisely that connection between nationalism
and liberalism which alarmed the Russian authorities. When denounced to the czar, the
society was closed at his order in 1847 and its leaders were arrested and sentenced to
imprisonment or exile. Shevchenko was treated with special severity, being condemned to
serve as a private in a disciplinary battalion in Central Asia, “with a prohibition
of writing and painting,” as Nicholas I added with his own hand. For
Shevchenko’s poetic evocation of the Ukraine’s past seemed so dangerous that it
was decided to suppress Ukrainian nationalism completely.

No similar action was needed in the other non-Russian parts of
the empire, but the situation in the Baltic region, that small but important section of
East Central Europe now annexed by Russia, deserves special attention. Both in the
so-called Baltic provinces, corresponding to present-day Latvia and Estonia, and in the
grand duchy of Finland, the coexistence of different national groups, opposed to one
another, greatly reduced the challenge to Russian imperialism and nationalism.

In the Baltic provinces, which without enjoying the full
autonomy of Finland continued to have some local self-government, these privileges were
exclusively in favor of a small but rich and highly cultivated German upper class, whether
landowners the Baltic “barons” or intellectuals and merchants in the old and
prosperous cities. Their German nationalism was purely cultural and combined with complete
political loyalty toward the Russian Czardom, which many representatives of the
German-Baltic aristocracy continued to serve in diplomacy and the army. Socially and
linguistically there was a clear-cut separation between these German Balts and the Latvian
and Estonian peasant population, but among both non-German ethnic groups a cultural
revival set in during the first half of the nineteenth century. This was facilitated by
the abolition of serfdom which was here accomplished much earlier (1816—1819) than in
the other parts of the empire.

In both cases the movement, still entirely non-political,
started with the study of folklore, the collecting of folk songs, and the appearance of
the first newspapers in the native tongues. The University of Dorpat (Tartu in
Estonian), reorganized in 1802 with German as the language of instruction, soon became a
center of local studies with the participation of many students of Latvian and Estonian
origin. The foundation of the Estonian Learned Society in 1838 proved an important
landmark. But it was not before the second half of the century that progress in that
direction was accelerated and that a real Latvian and Estonian nationalism can be
discovered.

Much earlier were the origins of Finnish nationalism which can
be traced back to the time of Swedish domination, and which also in the earlier period of
Russian rule, when the autonomy of the grand duchy was respected by the czars, was rather
directed against the cultural supremacy of the Swedish-speaking minority in Finland. But
even then prominent Finnish leaders, such as the poet and journalist A. I. Arwidson, were
aware of the danger of ultimate Russification. This was inherent in the union with the
colossal empire and for that very reason they wanted to eliminate the internal cleavage
between the Swedish and the Finnish group. And thanks to another poet, Elias Lönnrot,
Finnish nationalism received its decisive inspiration when at the middle of the reign of
Nicholas I (1835—1849) he published the famous national epic Kalevala,
compiled out of old folk poetry.

The same scale, from purely cultural to distinctly political
nationalism, can be found among the nationalities of the Austrian Empire. Metternich, more
than the emperors themselves, Francis I and after his death in 1835, Ferdinand I, who were
rather weak and insignificant rulers, represented the idea of absolute government. He was
hardly afraid of the cultural revival of the Czechs in spite of its steady progress. The
foundation of the Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom in 1818 was indeed rather an expression
of interest in regional studies. But when in 1830 the Matice ceska (literally
“Czech mother”) was attached to it, that society also started encouraging the
use of the Czech language. And it was obvious that the publication of Frantisek
Palacky’s History of Bohemia (though first in German), covering the period of
independence before Habsburg rule, would revive a national tradition in complete
opposition to all that Metternich was standing for.

Some of the most prominent Czech writers, like the poet Jan
Kollár and the historian P. J. Safarik, were of Slovak origin and interested in the past
and the culture of all Slavic peoples. They contributed on the one hand to a feeling of
Slavic solidarity in the Habsburg Empire, long before that movement was exploited by
Russian imperialism, and on the other hand to a national revival even of those Slavs who
never had created independent states, like the Slovenes and the Slovaks themselves. Though
very close to the Czechs, the Slovaks under the leadership of Ludovit Stur decided to use
their own language in literature, thus reacting against the backward conditions in which
they were left under Hungarian rule.

Trying to play off the various nationalities against one
another, the Metternich regime, for instance, would use officials of Czech origin as tools
of Germanization in Polish Galicia, and would welcome the growing antagonism between the
Magyars and the other groups in Hungary. In that kingdom, whose state rights even
Metternich could not completely disregard, Hungarian nationalism was making rapid
progress, particularly in the cultural and economic field, thanks chiefly to Count
Széchenyi, called “the greatest Hungarian,” who in 1825 founded the Hungarian
Academy of Sciences. The Diet, which continued to function though with greatly reduced
power, was slow to carry out the democratic reforms advocated by Széchenyi, but in its
session of 1843—1844 it at last decided to replace Latin by Magyar as the official
language.

At the same time the Hungarian Diet also decided to prescribe
instruction in the Magyar language in the schools of Croatia where, therefore, Croat
nationalism was more alarmed by the inconsiderate pressure coming from Budapest than by
the centralization of the whole empire being promoted in Vienna. Furthermore, under these
conditions, the idea of Yugoslav unity, in spite of the old antagonism between Serbs and
Croats, was also becoming popular among the latter where the gifted writer and politician
Ljudevit Gaj (1809—1872) propagated the “Illyrian” movement and also
influenced the Slovenes in a similar sense.

Even in its rather modest beginnings, that movement was
dangerous for the unity of the monarchy because it could not find full satisfaction within
its existing boundaries. And such was also the case of Polish and Italian nationalism, as
well as of the Ruthenian and Rumanian aspirations. The former clashed in eastern Galicia
with Polish supremacy, and the latter in Transylvania with Magyar supremacy, while
cultural ties were at least established with the Ruthenians or Ukrainians of the Russian
Empire, and with the Rumanians in the Danubian principalities. But even more than these
international implications, the two big national problems which affected the Austrian
Empire alone, the Czech and the Magyar, were a growing source of tension because in these
cases modern nationalism found strong support in the historic tradition of two medieval
kingdoms. The Pan-Slavic trend among the Czechs was ready to use the Habsburg monarchy as
a basis of action, and the Hungarian program did not exclude a dynastic union with
Austria. But even so they were directed against the very foundations of Metternich’s
system and could not be represented by the chancellor’s police measures.

FROM THE CRISIS OF 1846 TO THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848

The revolutionary crisis of the middle of the nineteenth century which shattered most
of the European countries in protest against the political system established by the
Congress of Vienna is usually associated with the memorable year of 1848, with the
so-called “spring of the peoples.” It was indeed in the spring of that year that
the movement started in Western Europe and in the western, German part of Central Europe.
In East Central Europe, however, where the tension was deepest and the claims for national
freedom even stronger than those for constitutional reforms, the crisis started exactly
two years earlier, in the spring of 1846.

It started with the utopian project of a Polish insurrection
which would be directed against all three partitioning powers at the same time. From the
outset it proved impossible to include any direct action against Russia, which dominated
by far the largest part of Polish lands and where the oppression was most violent. For
Nicholas I who in the thirties had already crushed all conspiratorial activities of the
Poles, now succeeded, and even in the decisive year of 1848, in stopping all revolutionary
movements at the border of his empire. It was therefore Prussian Poland which was selected
as a basis for the new struggle for freedom. Here the prospective leader, Ludwik
Mieroslawski, had already appeared in 1845. The reasons for such a decision must be
explained against the background of the general situation in Prussia.

As far as her policy toward the Polish population was
concerned, earlier attempts at reconciliation, in agreement with the promises of 1815, had
been followed by the systematic repressions of Edward Flottwell who in 1830 replaced the
Polish prince, Anton Radziwill, as governor of the grand duchy of Poznan. On the other
hand, not only in that purely Polish province but also in West Prussia and Silesia all
government efforts toward Germanization met with strong resistance. This was not at all
limited to the Catholic clergy and to the nobility, who were considered the main
representatives of Polish nationalism, but it was also organized by a Polish middle class
which had been formed in these western lands earlier than in any other part of Poland. It
was there that the most advanced cultural, social, and economic progress had been made by
the Polish people, while such progress was entirely impossible under the regimes of
Metternich and Nicholas I. Even under Frederick William IV, new king of Prussia since
1840, who recalled Flottwell, only the methods of anti-Polish policy were changed. But the
apparently anti-Russian attitude of the government, and some sympathy displayed by
Prussian liberals, created the illusion that eventually the planned Polish action would
find Prussian support.

What really happened was, on the contrary, the arrest of
Mieroslawski and his collaborators in February, 1846, when their conspiracy was discovered
and all attempts to liberate Prussian Poland failed completely. At the same time, however,
a real tragedy took place in Austrian Galicia. Alarmed by preparations for a Polish
insurrection which had also started there, the Austrian administration incited the
peasants to rise against the noble landowners in some districts of western Galicia,
promising rewards for the killing or capturing of any of them. The peasants were told by
the Austrian bureaucracy that the nobles wanted to restore old Poland only to enslave
them, while the emperor was ready to abolish serfdom completely. As a matter of fact it
was precisely the leaders of the insurrection who, though of noble origin, like the
eminently prominent Edward Dembowski, had the most advanced ideas of social reform. Their
radicalism was best evidenced when at the end of February they seized power in the free
city of Cracow, where Jan Tyssowski, later an exile in the United States, was proclaimed
dictator. But his inadequate forces were defeated by the Austrians, Dembowski was killed,
and after a brief Russian occupation the republic of Cracow was annexed by the Austrian
Empire.

Even that obvious violation of the treaties of 1815 was
accepted by the Western powers which in spite of the aroused public opinion in France and
England limited themselves to weak diplomatic protests. And a new wave of violent
repressions set in, both in Galicia where the new governor, Count Stadion, tried to play
off the Ruthenians against the Poles, and in Prussia, where in December, 1847,
Mieroslawski and seven of his associates, after a long imprisonment, were sentenced to
death. But before they could be executed, the outbreak of the 1848 revolution opened
entirely new prospects not only for the Poles but for all the submerged nationalities of
East Central Europe.

As a matter of fact there were several revolutions in 1848, not
only in different countries but with different objectives. In the French February
Revolution, the issues were exclusively constitutional and social, but just as in the case
of the great Revolution of 1789, the general ideas of liberty which were spreading from
Paris all over Europe had a special appeal for those peoples who were deprived not only of
constitutional freedom—and this in a degree much greater than under Louis
Philippe’s French monarchy—but also of their national rights. Hence the growing
excitement in various foreign-dominated parts of Italy and particularly in the non-German
parts of Prussia and Austria. Not later than in March there appeared in both monarchies a
rather confusing combination of nationalist movements and general revolts against
autocratic regimes.

In Prussia, in spite of the disappointments of 1846, the
situation of that year seemed to repeat itself so far as the Polish question was
concerned. The liberation of Mieroslawski and his friends by German crowds in Berlin was
very significant in that respect. Returning to Poznan, the Polish leader also returned to
the plan of a war against czarist Russia with the support of a liberalized Prussia, whose
new minister of foreign affairs, Baron H. von Arnim, was in favor of such a conception.
The latter was also supported by Prince Adam Czartoryski who came from Paris to Berlin.
But all these plans were doomed to failure for two different reasons.

First of all, a war against Russia was seriously considered in
Prussia only so long as there was fear of Russian armed intervention in the German
revolution and a prospect of the active cooperation of other powers. But Nicholas I, well
advised by his ambassador in Berlin, remained passive, while the ambassadors of Britain
and even of revolutionary France made it quite clear that the Western powers did not
desire a conflict with the czar any more than Austria, who was involved in her own
troubles. On the other hand, the impossibility of Polish-Prussian cooperation became
obvious as soon as the “national reorganization” of at least the province of
Poznan was considered. Contrary to the initial promises of the government, any
administrative reform in favor of the Poles who hoped for complete separation from Prussia
was opposed by the German minority. A compromise negotiated by General Willisen, as royal
commissioner, was rejected by both sides, and after a decree which announced the division
of the grand duchy into a Polish and a German part, open fighting started with the result
that on May 9, 1848, the insurrectionary Polish forces had to capitulate.

There followed a violent anti-Polish reaction under the new
commissioner, General Pfuel, who was even ready to cede to Russia a part of the Poznan
province. Finally such drastic changes were abandoned, but even the Frankfurt Parliament,
where a few liberals had spoken in favor of the Poles and the reconstruction of their
country, fully approved Prussia’s policy in the name of a “healthy national
egoism.” Such an attitude was in agreement with the general program of German
nationalism which in 1848 claimed the unification of all German states in one empire,
whether under Prussian or Austrian leadership, but which also wanted to include many
non-German populations that were under the control of both these powers.

In the case of the Habsburg monarchy, such an approach had
implications of a much larger scope, affecting at least all those possessions of the
dynasty which in the past had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and which since 1815 had
been included in the German Confederation. For that very reason the Bohemian lands were
invited to send representatives to the Frankfurt Parliament, a claim which was rejected in
the name of the Czechs by the historian Palacky, who now became the political leader of
the nation. Nevertheless, when in March, 1848, almost simultaneously with the revolution
in Berlin, a similar movement broke out in Vienna, here too at the beginning there seemed
to be a possibility of cooperation among all those who, irrespective of nationality, had
suffered under the Metternich regime. This cooperation was to include Austrian Germans,
who were chiefly interested in constitutional reforms and other peoples who hoped that
under a liberal constitution their national rights would also receive consideration.

In Austria, too, the Polish question, which had received such a
harsh blow two years before, was immediately reopened, and in Galicia, as in Prussian
Poland, concessions were made at the beginning of the revolution. These included the
creation of national committees in Cracow and Lwow, and the raising of hopes for a
reconstruction of Poland in connection with the Habsburg monarchy. But there was even less
chance of cooperation against the Russian Czardom—the main obstacle to such a
reconstruction—than in Prussia. On the contrary, on April 26 Cracow had already been
bombarded by the Austrian commander, and when Polish activity was transferred to the
eastern part of Galicia, the Austrian government favored the claim of the Ruthenians. This
was to cut off that part of Galicia as a separate province with a Ruthenian majority. In
November drastic anti-Polish measures also set in there. Lwow, too, was bombarded. The
first Pole, Waclaw Zaleski, who had been made governor of Galicia, was recalled, and
although the partition of Galicia did not materialize, the whole province was again
subject to efforts of Germanization and to strict control by the central authorities.

Here, however, the analogy with the fate of Prussian Poland
ends. In the multinational Austrian Empire the Poles did not limit themselves to another
abortive uprising in their section of the monarchy, but took an active and sometimes a
leading part in all other revolutionary movements, including even that of the Viennese
population. A first important step was the Polish participation in the Slavic congress
which was opened in Prague on June 2. Like the whole earlier purely cultural phase of
Pan-Slavism, that congress, naturally under Czech leadership, had nothing in common with
the later development of that trend which was sponsored by Russia. Except for the isolated
extremist Bakunin, who hoped in vain to use Bohemia as a basis for a communist revolution,
the Russians were conspicuously absent from the congress. There was indeed in Prague a
difference between conservative partly aristocratic leaders who were defending traditional
regionalism, and a liberal, even radical, majority. There were also individual delegates
from outside the Habsburg monarchy. But all of them represented those Slavic peoples who,
crushed between German and Russian imperialism, hoped that a reorganization of that
monarchy on democratic principles would give them a chance for free development.

In spite of such a positive attitude toward Austria, whose
existence even Palacky considered indispensable in that phase of his activity, the
imperial authorities were suspicious. In Prague, as in the two Polish cities, the end was
a bombardment, the congress being dispersed. In addition to that hostility of the military
and bureaucratic elements in the central government, however, there was another difficulty
which made the Slavic congress and its whole program end in failure. It had already
appeared during the deliberations that the Slavs, though a majority in the Habsburg
monarchy, were not the only non-German group which had to be taken into consideration in
any reform project. Besides the Italian and Rumanian question of a rather special
character, there was the big issue of Hungary with her Magyar leaders and her own
nationalities problems.

SLAVS AND MAGYARS IN THE HUNGARIAN INDEPENDENCE WAR

In spite of the failure of the various revolutionary movements in Austria in the spring
of 1848, the Metternich regime could not be maintained. A constituent assembly or
preliminary parliament had to be convoked by Emperor Ferdinand I even before he abdicated,
on December 2, in favor of his nephew, Francis Joseph I. That assembly, meeting first in
Vienna and later in Kromeriz (Kremsier) in Moravia, had to prepare a constitution for the
Habsburg monarchy which would not only establish a parliamentary government and introduce
social reforms but also give satisfaction to the claims of the various nationalities.
Under a Polish speaker, Francis Smolka, both German and Slav deputies made a serious
effort to solve these two problems. The latter, particularly the Czechs, wanted a real
federalization of the empire which Pa1acky, in his plan of January 13, 1849, proposed to
divide into eight entirely new provinces corresponding to the main ethnic groups. In order
to avoid too drastic changes of the existing boundaries and the breaking up of the various
historic units, the final draft of the new constitution, of March 1, attempted a
compromise. Self-government was provided for each of the historic lands of the monarchy,
but those which had a mixed population were to be subdivided into autonomous districts (Kreise)
for each nationality. This constructive idea was never to materialize, however, and the
whole “Kremsier Constitution” was abandoned when the new prime minister, Prince
Felix Schwarzenberg, dissolved the assembly and returned to an absolute and centralistic
form of government under German leadership.

One of the reasons for that final defeat of the Austrian
revolution, even in its moderate expression, was indeed the military strength of the
imperial regime. The Austrian army under Field Marshal Radetzky twice defeated the only
foreign power which interfered with the internal troubles of the monarchy. This was the
kingdom of Sardinia which, aiming at the unification of Italy, tried in vain to liberate
the Italian populations still under Habsburg rule. But for the history of East Central
Europe the second reason for the temporary victory of imperialism and absolutism is even
more significant. It was not only difficult in general to reconcile the frequently
conflicting claims of the various nationalities for instance, the claims of Italians and
“Illyrians” (Slovenes and Croats in the maritime provinces or the claims of
Poles and Ruthenians in Galicia) but any federal transformation of the empire, following
ethnic lines, found an almost insurmountable obstacle in the basic opposition between the
historic conception of the kingdom of Hungary and the aspirations of the non-Magyar
nationalities of that kingdom which Vienna was able to play off against Budapest.

In that respect failure to arrive at an agreement was the more
regrettable because the Magyars represented by far the strongest force of opposition
against the central regime. Realizing this, Ferdinand I, the fourth as king of Hungary,
accepted the demands of the bloodless revolution which also broke out in Hungary’s
capital in the middle of March, 1848. Count Louis Batthyány became the first Hungarian
prime minister and the liberal bills voted by the Hungarian Diet were approved. But the
delicate issue of the relations between the new democratic kingdom and Austria, which was
left in suspense, alarmed both the reactionaries in Vienna and the non-Magyar peoples of
Hungary. The latter were afraid of the nationalism of the most influential Magyar leader,
Louis Kossuth, a man who was favorable to social reforms but who was unprepared to
recognize the equal rights of all nationalities.

Most of these were Slavs, including the Slovaks of northern
Hungary—close kin of the Czechs in the Austrian part of the empire—and the Serb
minority in southern Hungary looking toward the autonomous principality of Serbia on the
other side of the border. But more than any other Slavs and more than the Rumanians of
Transylvania, who at once protested against the incorporation of that province with
Hungary and who were influenced by the rising Rumanian nationalism in the Danubian
principalities, the Croats were to prove the most dangerous opponents of the Hungarian
revolution. Fearing for the traditional autonomy of their kingdom if the ties with a free
Hungary were to be made closer, they hoped to best serve their own national interests by
siding with the imperial government in Vienna. It was therefore the Croat army, under
Baron Joseph Jellachich, appointed ban of Croatia by the emperor and also ready to
cooperate with the Orthodox Serbs, which was used by Austria to crush the Magyars.

Jellachich’s army was defeated when it entered Hungary in
September, 1848. Even the occupation of Pest, early in 1849, by the same Prince
Windisch-Graetz who had stopped the Slavic movement in Prague, and in October, 1848,
another uprising in Vienna which was favorable to the Hungarians, did not put an end to
the fierce resistance of the Magyars. On the contrary, equally opposed to the projects of
the Kromeriz Assembly and to the centralized empire which was supposed to replace them,
the Magyars, fearing that their kingdom would be made a mere province of Austria, with
Transylvania and even the Serb territory (Voivodina) being separated, decided to dethrone
the Habsburg dynasty, and on April 14,1849, at Debrecen, they approved a declaration of
independence which was partly drafted on the American model. At the same time the
parliament named Kossuth “Governing President.”

He also had to conduct the war in defense of the new republic
whose establishment seemed to be a turning point in the history of East Central Europe, a
first step in the direction of the complete liberation of all nations placed under foreign
rule. As such it was particularly welcomed by the Poles whose friendship with the
Hungarians was traditional. But in spite of that friendship the Polish leaders were fully
aware of the fateful mistake which the defenders of Hungarian nationalism were making by
disregarding the nationalism of the non-Magyar peoples. A reconciliation between Magyars
on the one hand and Slavs and Rumanians on the other, was strongly encouraged both by
Prince Czartoryski, who continued to conduct Polish diplomacy from Paris and who
established relations even with Sardinia and Serbia, and by the Polish generals who
participated in the Hungarian independence war.

One of them, Henryk Dembinski, was for a certain time even
commander in chief of the Hungarian forces. Another, Josef Bem, a better strategist and
more popular in Hungary, particularly distinguished himself in the defense of Transylvania
where he tried in vain to better the relations between Magyars and Rumanians. He had to
fight not only against the Austrians but also against the Russians, because after the
defeat of Windisch-Graetz the emperor had asked for aid from Czar Nicholas I who had been
able to prevent any revolutionary outbreak in his own realm and had stopped a liberal
revolt in Rumania. The czar now was ready to offer his assistance in crushing the last and
most alarming insurrection in East Central Europe.

The Polish participation in that revolution was for him a
special reason for interfering since he was afraid that a Hungarian victory would also
encourage the Poles to resume their struggle for independence, possibly under the same
generals, and with the revolutionary movement eventually spreading from Austrian to
Russian Poland. On his way to Hungary the Russian field marshal Paskevich, the same who
had crushed the Polish insurrection in 1831 and now governed the former
“kingdom,” took his auxiliary army through Galicia which was still restless
after the troubles of 1848. The first Hungarian territory which he entered was the
Ruthenian region south of the Carpathians, where among close kin of the czar’s
“Little Russians” or Ukrainians—another national minority rather neglected
by the Magyars—a feeling of solidarity with Russia was created on that occasion.

Attacked from two sides by superior forces, the exhausted
Hungarian army, in spite of the courageous efforts of its last commander, General Arthur
Görgey, had to capitulate. This took place at Világos near Arad on August 13, 1849, and
all fighting ended in October when General George Klapka had to surrender the fortress of
Komárom. This was at the same time the end of the whole revolutionary movement in the
Habsburg Empire, and although even the Russians suggested an amnesty, the long resistance
of the Hungarians was now ruthlessly punished. The victorious Austrian commander, General
Julius Haynau, instituted a regime of terror which culminated in the execution of the
former prime minister, Batthyány, and thirteen high officers. Kossuth had to go into
exile and it was in America that he was received with special enthusiasm in 1851. But in
general the Hungarian emigration was no more successful than the Polish in getting Western
support for the oppressed peoples of East Central Europe.

Moreover, it was not only the Magyars who had to suffer from
the new era of reaction. This was similar to the Metternich regime in its twofold trend of
centralization and Germanization, which after the end of the military operations lasted
for about ten years in the whole Habsburg monarchy under prime minister Alexander von
Bach. After fighting on the Austrian side, even Croatia lost her former autonomy and
separate diet, and the non-Magyar nationalities of Hungary proper, including the Saxons of
Transylvania, were equally disappointed, the new Serb voivodina being placed under
military administration.

In the Austrian part of the monarchy, all administrative and
judicial reforms which had to be undertaken under pressure of the barely suppressed
revolution were also aimed at a complete unification of the empire through a German
bureaucracy. Contrary to the promises which had been made in March, 1849, the Bach
administration, instead of a parliament, merely created a “council of state”
which was composed of officials and which proved hostile to any kind of provincial
self-government and particularly to the claims of all non-German nationalities. Only in
Galicia was some progress made by the Poles, when after General Hammerstein’s
military regime, one of them, Count Agenor Goluchowski, was made governor or viceroy of
the undivided province. But even that prominent statesman was to find greater
possibilities of action only in the reform period ten years later.

Immediately after the revolutionary crisis of 1848, which in
East Central Europe began two years earlier and lasted one year longer than in the West,
that whole region returned to a condition similar to that which prevailed after the
Congress of Vienna. In the case of the Poles, that situation was even worse as far as
Russian Poland and Cracow were concerned, and all stateless nationalities resented their
oppression much more than ever before because of the continuous progress of their national
consciousness and the high hopes which the various revolutions had raised. These
revolutions having failed, it seemed that only a European war could improve their lot,
especially if Western Europe would show a real interest in the freedom of all nations in
opposition to the autocratic empires in the eastern part of the Continent. Nobody
expressed that idea better than the Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, who, turning from
literature to political action, had tried in 1848 to create a Polish legion in Italy, as
in the days of Bonaparte. He was now ready to welcome another Napoleon as a liberator and
the Crimean War as an occasion for reorganizing Europe on a basis of national rights.